


Walk Into the Sunrise

by Zagzagael



Series: The Sun and the Moon [1]
Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-03 08:50:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zagzagael/pseuds/Zagzagael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>coda 4x15</p>
<p>Caroline goes home, alone, after Elena has her humanity turned off. Klaus goes to check on her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She refused to check the time again. Admonished herself for wanting to reach for the phone and tip it up to her line of vision, head still cradled on her pillow. The last time she checked, her mind had spun away from the digital numbers, refusing to do the math. Had time simply stopped moving? Or perhaps, time had ripped her into the future, an exact 24 or 48 hours torn away. The minutes felt like hours, the hours like minutes, and she did not know if she had slipped into sleep or had just closed her eyes for the fleeting moment. There was no relief, there was no rest and the clock-stopped part of her felt shamed by this because surely - shouldn't Elena be wrestling with her own cruel timelord. And Caroline had spent enough of her own dark nights to know that time could heal, but Elena was crisscrossed with scarring and what sort of delayed wounding would flipping the switch bring? 

She turned onto her back, reached over to the nightstand and flicked the phone onto its glass face. It smacked with a satisfying sound. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and tried to hold onto a recent memory of Jeremy laughing at something Matt had said, the way his face softened, his eyes crinkled shut, his wide mouth drawn across his perfect teeth. But instead, Jeremy lying in a kind of unbelievable state in his own childhood bedroom kept invading her thoughts and she finally threw back the covers and sat up, legs over the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, hands combing through her hair. She was still in her clothes, wrinkled and mussed. 

In the quiet, empty house the sound of knuckles on the front door should have had her jumping in her skin, but instead her heart leapt up at the thought of someone coming to her in the night. 

She tiptoed across the cold floor, peeked around the door, down the long hallway and saw the figure outlined in moonlight. There was no moment of regret or disappointment wishing he was someone else. Or even her habitual frustration that seemed to accompany his presence. Instead she surprised herself with joy and she moved quickly to the door. 

“Oh, Caroline.” 

His voice was stricken and she realized with a sensation similar to falling that it was not, of course, because of Jeremy. Her name in his mouth, the swallowed last syllable, the sympathetic tilt of his head; it all undid her and she stepped across the threshold and into his arms.

She was, suddenly, overcome. His embrace, Jeremy's death, the mess of living and dying. She began to cry and with one hand on the back of her head he began to rock her gently. He led her to the single step of the stoop and lowered her to it and sat beside her, somehow still holding her face against his neck.

Again, time seemed to bend and flex, stuttering between them, and she allowed him to comfort her, to be soothed. Felt the strength in his arms, the span of his fingers, the dark honey smell of his flesh, but more she found safety and compassion and somehow this broke the dam inside of her and she wept herself dry.

She breathed in once, twice, holding the third breath until it burned, then she straightened and wiped at his wet neck with one hand, her face with the other and she looked at him. “How did you…how did you…”

“Shhhh. Rebekah telephoned me. Shhhh….” With a thumb under her eye, he wiped gently at her face. He dropped his hand away and settled back on the cement, a gapping distance between them now. His face open with cautious sadness.

“Why are you here?”

“Caroline.” He scowled slightly. “I wanted to make sure you weren't here. Alone.”

She gestured helplessly at herself, at the night. 

He nodded at this, his eyes open, his gaze fast on her face. “So I see. I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” She bit her lip. “No, no, that’s not what I want to say." She furrowed her brow deeply. "Thank you. I’m sorry too.”

He had closed his eyes but opened them again as she spoke. 

“I’m glad. Actually.” She allowed a small smile, a surprised widening of her eyes and he answered with a grin of such sincere happiness that she felt something hard inside of her soften. “I’m worried about her. I’m worried about all of us, really.”

“Family.”

She balled both hands into fists and pressed hard under her jaw. A low moan escaped her lips and he was reaching for her again and she shook her head no. “How do we survive all of this? How?” She covered her face with her hands.

His hands helpless between his knees, he moved slightly away from her again. “Endure the unendurable, suffer what is insufferable.”*

She lowered her hands and turned her body fully towards him, pulling one leg up beneath the other. Feeling she could lean, fall, into him and he would catch her. Her eyebrows were raised in question.

“Where do we measure the difference between one life and one hundred twenty thousand innocent dead. Any man’s death diminishes me.”**

She stood, angry now. “Why are you quoting words? Just words.”

He climbed to his feet, deliberately, the wolfen and wild grace of his compact body called to her. 

“The Tongan women would smash out their front teeth with rocks for their dead. No words there.”

“Stop.” She was horrified. “Please.”

He inclined his head, a small apology. "Alright." Then he narrowed his eyes, taking in her fragility. “Let’s walk. You and I.”

“Walk?”

“Yes.” He moved away from her, she followed close on his heel, then stepped up beside him. His strides were long but his pace casual. He smiled at her, lips closed.

“Where are we going?”

“No one place in particular, love. But,” he slowed now and reached out towards her, his hand open, beckoning, “into the sunrise.”

With a great sense of deliberate movement, standing on the edges of her heart, she reached across for his hand and took it in her own. Their fingers twined naturally and he lowered his arm and pulled her up beside him.

"Into the sunrise?" she asked.

"Into the new day," he answered.

 

\--------

* Emperor Hirohito - 6 days after the atomic bombings of WWII

** John Donne - Every Man is an Island


	2. Chapter 2

The tallest building in Mystic Falls was a mere five stories high and although it towered over the one and two story buildings circling the town centre it fell far below the heights he wanted to climb with her. But it would have to do. No grassy hilltop for this girl, no incline edge. He perceived her nature as glittering silver and tantalizing gold rather than trees and meadows. 

They took the ridiculous elevator to the top and strolled down a short maintenance hallway and through a door, he had to force, that opened onto the asphalted roof. Outside again, in the night, street lights like a connect-the-dots of downtown, he heard the slightest hitch in her breathing and he smiled to himself. He wanted so desperately to show her the wide world.

On the rooftop, he let her wander and returned to the fifth floor for two conference chairs. Once returned he set them on the eastern side of the roof. He settled himself and kicked his booted feet up on the low cement edging, tipping the chair back on its hind legs, scanning the jagged horizon of this pathetically jerkwater town. Not long now. He glanced over to where he knew she was standing, hesitant, and she had begun to smile. It softened her face, partially closed her eyes, parting her lips and inside his chest his heart tipped towards her.

She drew closer to him, her arms were relaxed and her hands graceful. He knew, suddenly, if there was music she could be persuaded to dance. Perhaps he should have taken her to a hilltop, let her find her faerie wings. 

“Can you sense it?” he asked.

“Sense what?” she walked behind him and sat beside him in the other chair.

He could tell something had been dampened inside her, she was quiet, reflective. She turned her face towards him and he saw a new openness there she had never worn around him before. 

“What?” she laughed softly, gently. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Shhhhhh,” he reached out and placed a fingertip on the bow of her upper lip. She allowed this for a moment then bent her face away. “Can you sense the sun rising? Or rather, I suppose, the earth turning towards her?”

She drew her perfect brows together, hard and fast. Eyes narrowed, doubtful. “No?” 

He nodded. “Hmmm.” He closed his eyes. Then smiled and looked over at her. “Why do you approach every conversation we have with such suspicion?”

“I don’t trust you?” she said.

Her acquired valley girl inflection made him hungry. “Yes. I get that. But where is suspicion warranted in regards to this?” He waved a hand at the eastern sky.

She twisted her lips, shaking her head minutely. Then laughed. “That’s dumb, isn’t it? But yeah, I’m not sensing the sun rising.” She indicated herself. “Eighteen years here to your bazillion, right? Maybe I’m not old enough.” She smiled, a wicked sharp shape to her mouth.

He had to pull his gaze away from the knife’s edge of her lips. “Leaving that for a moment, let’s see if we can’t help you to feel the sun rising, discern the earth spinning, shall we?”

She nodded, “Okay. If you think you can. I want to.”

“Good.” This would have been easier away from brickwork and cement, he surmised. Feet grounded to the earth. “Here, let’s stand. Now face the east.”

“How do you know which way is east?” 

“Caroline. What do they teach in schools these days?” He placed his fingertips lightly on her back and pressed her shoulderward towards the approaching sunlight. “Now, close your eyes. Tip your face up, open your, I don’t know, your lungs? Breathe.”

He turned as well, breathing in the smell of petrol and damp asphalt, bricks turning to dust, somewhere a tomcat’s markings, and beside him the headrush of this girl, her soap, her perfume, deeper, her blood and bones. He bit his upper lip. Hard. 

“That daylight ring hasn’t done you any favours if you can’t recognize sunlight. An important skill for a vampire, don’t you think?”

She stilled next to him, he could feel the night breeze stutter then smooth across her body. “That is important, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But right now, eyes, lungs. Breathe. Good. Feel your feet on the rooftop here, feel the building on its foundations, now feel the earth, the ground, the core of everything below that.” He let her adjust to his directions, felt her tense then relax. “Okay, now move yourself forward towards the east, towards the sun. Feel the warmth, feel the light of it. I don’t know how to say this, bend your essence towards it?”

She gasped. 

He could physically feel her leaning into the rising sun. “She calls to you, doesn’t she, Caroline?”

Eyes still closed, he had stopped breathing, wanted to be stone still, wanted to feel the ancient cells in his body awaken to the new day. Suddenly, she had his hand in hers and they were leaning, leaning into the sliver of light cutting across the far dark horizon of the night. 

“Open your eyes. Now.”

The sky began to become an ombre layering of mottled grey, then pink, then a nearly transparent band of pure light. 

He lowered himself back into the chair, their fingers un-twining. He felt the loss in each tip, in the cup of his palm, the bones of his wrist. He watched her in the man-lit dark, watched her as the sun’s light began to illuminate her, reveal her.

After a long time, she sat beside him, turning her body and face towards him. He smiled, lips pressed together, contented.

“Why do you call the sun “her”? I thought the moon was a her and the sun was a him.”

“You’re right, of course. Poetry and myth.” He narrowed his eyes, watching her watch him. “I’m beginning to see it differently. Just as of late, mind you. The sun is the bringer of light and giver of life with the terrible, awesome power to destroy everything in this universe.”

She inclined her head, the familiar lift of her brow, the tightening of the corner of her lips but the whites of her eyes were sparkling in the new morning light.

“You are like the sun, Caroline. So surely the sun must be feminine.”


	3. Chapter 3

The sky was soft and the palest silver. Almost tipped into yellow. They were still seated in the rather uncomfortable chairs. She had been dozing, she recognized that after rousing herself to a gentle wakefulness, wiping at her mouth, and glancing over at him. He was relaxed and lounging, feet up on the low cement wall, head on the chair back, face turned, watching her out of slitted eyelids. She startled slightly, then scowled at him.

“What, love?”

“Don’t watch me when I’m sleeping. That’s creepy.”

“Creepy?” 

She saw that she had injured him again, one of the hundreds of small arrows she continued to strike him with. She frowned. 

“Those who continue to draw the bow-“ He said this haltingly, a sad resignation in his voice, standing. 

She could see disappointment in the shape of his shoulders. He stretched tall on the balls of his feet.

“What?” She rubbed briskly at her arms then began to massage deeply into the palms of her hands.

“Don’t ‘what’ me, sweetheart. Time to get you home.”

“I can get myself home, thank you very much.”

He nodded, watching her, then suddenly and with no warning signs, reached for the chair he had been sitting on, lifting it in one fluid movement and flinging it over the rooftop. It hit the sidewalk below, one leg snapping clean off, and skidded across the cement, ricocheting between two city planter boxes and sliding up against the edge of the donut shop. The noise a deafening punctuation in the early morning silence.

“Wow. Mature.”

“Stop. Please.” He walked away from her, hands pressing into the small of his back, staccato strides to the far end of the rooftop. For a long, disgruntled moment she assumed he would just keep going, over the edge, down onto the street, and disappear into the strange new morning. But instead, she watched him stop, his hands coming up to brace the back of his neck, pulling his head down and the posture was so poignant that she moved quickly to his side.

“Klaus.”

His lips were pressed tightly together, the beautiful arch of them flattened and white along the sharp edges. 

“I don’t know why I do that.” She was contrite without realizing it.

Silence and now his eyes were closed, one shoulder turned slightly away from her. The body protecting the vulnerable side of itself.

“I don’t hate you.”

A small nod. 

“This,” she indicated the rooftop, knowing he wasn’t watching, her fingertips came to settle between her breasts, tapping at the hard part of her body. “This meant a lot. I needed this. And I know I’m behaving terribly.”

“Let’s go.” He turned and she followed. 

Small human steps trudging down the stairs. He was a body-length in front of her and for five floors she was able to study him until finally, nearly to the street level, she had memorized the cadence of his descent, the way his shoulders tensed then relaxed, the swing of his arms, from the elbows down to the lengths of each of his fingers, curled back inside his loose fists, the gentle connection of the soles of his boots with the cement treads, the reach for the metal handrail but the ghosting of actually grasping it, a memory more than a need. The purposeful tilt of his head, holding his face away from her, she knew he knew she was watching him. Watching the control of his body in space, the inhabitation of his skin and bones. At the bottom, they walked through the front doors after he broke the metal jambing, and as he held the door open for her and she ducked under his arm, her stomach twisted into a knot so fierce that hunger became every emotion coursing through her body. She was ravenous.

He had stopped and finally turned towards her, his face open and imploring. “I want to say something. I need to say this.”

“No,” she answered, stepping up close to him, fingers on his mouth, pressing his lips closed. 

He stilled under her touch, she could feel the power in his body, could feel the tension in his face, the teeth behind his lips, something trembled out of him towards her. It sparked into her fingers, down her arm, across the span of her ribs and into her heart. With clarity so instantaneous that she had to close her eyes to the visualization, she recognized that she was the step-leader arcing down from the storm cloud and he the streamer leaping out of the earth to meet her, welcome her to his embrace, open a path in which lightning could crack and explode and sear the air between them. It was not he striking her, it was she crackling and flashing and searching for a way to ignite. He was the charge wanting to ground her with heat.


	4. Chapter 4

She was aware of him. Now. In an emotive physicality that was new. The suck-breath moment culminating in a delicious vertigo. Before, it had been visceral and cerebral. Churning guts and a closed mind. 

He sensed the sea change in her. His blood was hot, his bones bending towards her bones. His lips on fire, he could feel the memory imprint of every single one of her fingertips on his mouth. His teeth ached. 

They had stood, pressed very nearly together, for a long moment in which everything fell away, they molted their old skins, on the sidewalk. The morning sun warming the new day with an intangible sense of hope. As though of a single volition, they began walking again, shoulder to shoulder, arms brushing, fingers reaching across. The space between them crackled.

“Where are we going?” she asked softly.

“Wherever our feet take us, love.”

“That’s very zen of you.”

He laughed and she smiled.

“Damon turned Elena’s humanity off.”

He nodded, shoved his far hand deep into the front pocket of his jeans. “Not a popular opinion, but I do think Damon has her very best interests at heart.”

“I tried phoning Tyler.”

“Did you?”

“He never answered. Didn’t call me back.”

“He’s gone, Caroline.”

“I know.” 

“Lost love is quite different than lost life.”

“Yeah? What kind of difference is it exactly?”

“Lost love hardens you, lost lives soften you.”

“Until you disintegrate.”

“That’s good,” he paused. “Yes, I think so.”

She reached for his hand and his heart stammered.

“Tyler’s been gone less than a week.” His voice was cautious.

“It’s not the first time.” She squeezed his fingers, shook her hand almost free, then reached out for just two of his fingers and held on tightly.

He stopped, turning to face her. They were in the woods, a shortcut back to suburbia and the house she lived in. He reached out with his empty hand and she filled it.

“Caroline. It’s been a long, long time for me."

She almost laughed, the sound was forced and uncertain. "I don't know what that means. A few days? Weeks? A month maybe?"

"Centuries.”

“What are you saying?” She looked at him, he held her gaze. “Since you? Really?”

“You’re so surprised?”

She bit her upper lip, worried at it between her sharp, white teeth. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m not sure. To warn you?”

“They say it’s like riding a bicycle.”

“That’s a bit crass. And not exactly what I'm talking about.” He stepped closer to her, could hear her hold her breath. “I never learnt to ride a bicycle.”

“Klaus….”

“Be sure. Just be sure.”

She nodded, her gaze locked to his. She leant into his body and let his hands go, her arms around his waist, pulling their two trembling forms together. He opened himself to her, his embrace a slow and gradual locking. Their heads bent towards one another, foreheads touching. He closed his eyes and marveled at the starscape of her universe spreading across the black sky of his eyelids. She closed her eyes and fell into the mottled grey space shaped exactly like his body.


End file.
